Candidate Obama, President Obama:
Candidate Obama, June 2008, in front of AIPAC: "And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." Obama Administration, July 2009: "The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction." [I've edited slightly to clarify that the second quote is Obama administration policy, no doubt blessed by Obama, not a direct Obama quote like the first one.]
Obviously President Obama will veto any health care bill with a surtax that is above the Clinton-era rates, right?
The big question(s) to my mind are A ) How much damage can he do to this country during his first term, and B ) can he con his leftist flock into giving him a second one ? Concomittent with B is B1) Can the Republicans find a viable candidate who 1 ) is not just 'the next guy in the seniority line, and 2 ) isnt' diping his dipper where it don't belong, and getting caught at it ?
Folks - we are in serious trouble.
What you have to realize is what the maximum tax rate was, what the tax schedule was, under Reagan - 70% Feds, wasn't it?
So he wasn't really L-Y-I-N-G you see - and the idiots bought the easy rhetoric, telling their friends, see, he isn't going to raise taxes... never mind that back then there were loopholes and shelters that were all removed when the tax rates were reduced.
Not only will you now pay more, you will have no relief - and Cap and Trade will also be a giant new tax that will hit the poor, and STILL allow him to say he was being honest.
Nothing Obama says is straightforward - and, despite the iff-y honesty here, he often lies outright, says one Orwellian thing that makes the paper, then turns around and does the opposite, but that is never what makes the news. So watch out when he says he supports something, the opposite is true. Watch out when he says he will appoint a certain kind of justice, the opposite is true. Write it down. You will see.
And that doesn't count the state taxes going up. As Pete says we are in serious trouble.
Obama broke that "promise" a day or so after his 2008 speech through an aide who walked it back to the typical Washington insider position of being open to a politically divided Jerusalem. It seems Obama had gotten overly in love with the Israeli lobbyists with whom he was dealing, and by July 2008, he himself had to walk back to reality. See this article from the NY Sun dated July 16, 2009, which reads in part (couldn't do URL)
"Senator Obama, in his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." The next day, an unnamed adviser tried to "clarify" the statement to suggest it left room for Palestinian sovereignty.
"On Sunday in a CNN interview, Fareed Zakaria questioned Mr. Obama about his AIPAC speech supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. Mr. Zakaria asked him, "why not support the Clinton plan, which envisions a divided Jerusalem."
"Mr. Obama responded, "the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech" and a reminder of the need to be "careful in terms of our syntax." He said his point had been "simply" that "we don't want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67 war. ... I think the Clinton formulation provides a starting point for discussions between the parties."
"Mr. Obama's new endorsement of the Clinton plan as the "starting point" for negotiations involves much more than a problem in phrasing. He has converted his commitment at AIPAC to an "undivided" Jerusalem into support for the city's redivision."
David, you know better than this. For I definitely recall my right wing Jewish congregants making hay out of this issue to us Obama supporters—as if most of us Obama supporters disagreed with Obama's walk back position.
So I see no breaking of a campaign promise between 2008 and 2009. I see a misstep and a reversion to a traditional position of US presidential candidates. Again, I can't think of one Israel supporter who went to the polling booth in November 2008 thinking Obama was to the right of Clinton, Bush I, Bush II and Reagan on the subject of Jerusalem.
If anyone would dare ask him about his Jerusalem statement last year, I'm betting the response is "I never said it." He did it last week with the "working immediately" stuff on the stimulus, and whether it was ever supposed to be a "stimulus" in the first place. That he feels comfortable trying to get away with such a blatantly 1984-ish tactic is fairly creepy, and speaks directly to the fact that almost nobody's called him on anything his entire life. The one guy who dared to really stand up to him and not be pilloried by the media for it was Bobby Rush in the congressional race in 2000 ("What have you ever done?"), and Barack was handed a humiliating defeat.
The only thing Orwell got wrong was the year.
Their policy may result in millions of dead Jews, but they'll still be "morally superior" to the rest of us.
A poster here sais "If a person voted for him because they agree more with the Democrats, were tired of the GOP, wanted to see a black person in charge, hated Bush, etc., I get that entirely."
Well, that is what they did. Sadly, they picked an unknown black man with no quantifiable history of leadership or governance, one who happens to read a teleprompter well when David Axelrod et al write the speech for him, and had no legitimate qulaifications for the office he now holds.
He got his daughters a puppy.
And this kind of ad hominem is ok, Prof. B? I recall your deleting my comments and banning me without so much as a warning because I pointed out your inconsistencies on a previous post.
Assuming arguendo that the second quote is American policy, the two statements don't necessarily conflict. The first might apply only to West Jerusalem and those parts of East Jerusalem already inhabited by Israelis. But even if our position is that Israel should retain sovereignty over the parts of East Jerusalem still in Arab hands, we might nonetheless view it as as detrimental to peace for Israelis to buy Arab-held property before Israel and Palestine reach agreement.
Constantin:
Your speculation about the Jerusalem statement aside, do you have quotes and links for what you claim he already said and later denied saying?
Gitmo is still open, our troops are still in Iraq, DADT is still policy and DOMA is being vigorously defended by the Obama DOJ, extreme claims of executive privilege and the state secrets doctrine (some further than the Bush administration) are routinely being asserted, no Bush Administration officials have been investigated, let alone prosecuted for criminal violations with respect to torture/conspiracy to commit torture (at the very least), we're still torturing and renditioning people to other countries to be tortured, and now the Obama Administration's position is that the President has authority to detain anyone they deem a threat - even AFTER they've been acquitted of those allegations in a criminal trial. And Obama cares more about placating Republicans - whose votes are not needed - than pushing his agenda through the way Bush did (without any mandate).
So far, Obama is a complete failure.
Anyway, I have no problem with a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestinian problem as long as Israel has the right to take back any and all the land it gives up upon the first terrorist attack on Israeli soil confirmed to have been committed by a Muslim. Surely that has to be a precondition to Israel giving up any land. Otherwise what's to stop the Muslims from continuing to commit terrorist acts on the new, smaller Israel which they still won't recognize and will still want completely destroyed? Anyone who thinks a two-state solution in and of itself will bring peace is woefully ignorant. The new Palestinian state has to be given a vested interest in the safety of Israel. And the land reverting back to Israel is the only logical choice. Yes, they'll attack Israel and say the Israelis did it themselves, but it won't be hard to prove who really did it. The Swiss can do the investigation.
Just another partisan attack.
It's hard to figure out which sort of carnage would ensue first
It's also apparent this newspaper quote represents the United States' position as presented to the Israeli government. Several other sources verify the accuracy of the description. America's position it presents to other governments via its diplomats and consular officials is the President's position.
So if the news is correct, this is a huge difference from Candidate Obama to President Obama.
Stimulus timetable
Not a stimulus
How much damage did Bush do during his first term? He ignored the August 6, 2001, Briefing ("Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US") and through this and other inactions, failed to protect us from the events of September 11, 2001. He lied us into a war that's costing trillions of dollars we do not have and serve no national purpose. And he conducted the war in a manner that brought disgrace upon us, especially in how we are seen by the Islamic world. If President Obama manages to disentangle us from Bush's foreign entanglements, that alone will make him a pretty good leader. Thanks for listening.
And if one or more U.S. states do raise taxes (most likely in response to reduced state revenue resulting from the Bush financial meltdown), Obama's responsibility for this is what, exactly?
Lying about things you can't control is only very slightly better than lying about things you can control
If it turns out that Obama now views every Jerusalem apartment building built by Israel anywhere on the Jordanian side of pre-1967 borders as an illegal West Bank outpost, I will be very dismayed, and I will do my best to disabuse him of that position. I hope that this is not his view.
In other words, no, you don't.
Why on Earth would I do that? he said taxes wouldn't go up. That's it.
This kind of desperate contortion, all because you can countenance not even the whiff of fallibility of your Messiah, is unbecoming.
It's a mistake to assume power lust is equal to desire to see the country succeed, even if you think it's the same thing.
He says that Jerusalem should remain undivided, and then says that East Jerusalem would be included in a settlement freeze.
He doesn't say that EJ is an illegal settlement, but rather that it "views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze." So for the purposes of a particular request (imply the position might be different in other contexts), EJ and west bank outposts are both included in a settlement freeze.
Which is similar to "taxes should not go up". What idiot would think this means the speaker wouldn't try to increase them? Be real.
It wasn't? See this YouTube clip.
Oh, the quote attributed to "Obama Administration, July 2009"? Maybe he would have said "President Obama, July 2009". (It would have saved me a few minutes if the link in the first quote had been to coverage of the 2008 statement, not to the same Ha'aretz article.)
The far-left is not capable of ever saying "no" to a Palestinian demand.
The apparent shift in position is just for show – the shadow of an illusion of a bone thrown to us progressive, anti-Zionist Jews. So you needn't worry. Nothing will come of it. If Obama were serious about viewing either East Jerusalem or the West Bank settlements, etc., etc. as illegal or less than acceptable withing US policy, he'd have already done something concrete.
"Anti-zionists" don't differentiate between pre- and post- 67 territories. Sounds like MosheX isn't really a "progressive anti-Zionist Jew".
The idea goes back at least to the 1948 UN partition plan, which called for establishing Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, rejecting both division and sole Jewish (and likewise sole Arab) sovereignty. The language goes back at least to Sadat's letter appended to the Camp David Agreements, which states both that "Arab Jerusalem should be under Arab sovereignty" and:
Official US use goes back at least to a 1980-03-03 White House statement, declaring:
[Note the consistency with Obama's supposed "backing away" statement 2008-06-06, "… it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations."]
A little later, 1980-03-20, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State Vance said:
[Note the consistency with Obama's alleged "retraction" speaking to Zakaria 2008-07-13: "… we don't want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67 war, … it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent.]
The same language has been used with the same absence of implication of sole Israeli sovereignty by the President of the United States at least as recently as
2001-01-07 (Clinton, address to the Israel Policy Forum):
In short, the claim that Obama's AIPAC statement "Jerusalem … must remain undivided" implied sole Israeli sovereignty is false and baseless.
I'd be happy to let the Pals have E. Jerusalem if it would lead to peace, but I think that the idea that the Pals are ready, willing, and able to forge a lasting peace with Israel but for a few apartments going up in Jerusalem borders on fanciful.
E Jerusalem is not a single entity. Israelis have little issue with including Abu Dis or A Tur in negotiations. OTOH, the fact that Jordan happened to conquer the walled city, City of David, and Ramot in '67 is incidental and does not signify anything - these places are historically Jewish and are part of Israel and must remain that way.
In addition to the vaguely conspiratorial language, this guy is absolutely clueless.
In short, the claim that Obama's AIPAC statement "Jerusalem … must remain undivided" implied sole Israeli sovereignty is false and baseless.
Obama absolutely intended it to have that connotation as an attempt to pander to his audience. Now that he is in power he is free to throw them under the bus
Or, rather, yes, one could believe that Israel "should not" build there -- but it's not possible to believe that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of Israel and that it would be illegal for Israel to build apartments and houses there.
If you want to walk back your claim, knock yourself out. Just don't expect it to go unnoticed. You said,
You didn't say the WH spokesman contradicted something Obama said. You said Obama denied saying it. If you don't think those are significantly different, we have at best an insurmountable language barrier.
David Letterman makes videos like that one, stringing stuff together to make people look silly. The difference is he admits his are comedy. He doesn't expect them to be taken seriously, much less cited.
You cite to propaganda, and I'm desperate? You resort to ad hominems, and my comments are unbecoming? What evidence do you have to call Obama my Messiah? It must be more than simply my having challenged that nonsense about Obama denying his own words. You wouldn't accuse me of Obama worship unless you assured yourself I've never referred to his fallibility, at least on this site, right? Because that would be... what? Unbecoming?
He said that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel " and must remain undivided. Which does "speak to the ultimate question of sovereignty." What you describe are all situations where Jerusalem is united but not the capital of Israel.
1. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel (i.e. the Knesset, Supreme Court, and various national government offices are located in Jerusalem).
2. Jerusalem will remain a united city (without barbed wire borders).
3. Jerusalem, or parts of Jerusalem, will be administered by more than one national government. There are many ways that this might be done.
In short, points 1 and 2 ("Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel" and must remain undivided) do not necessarily "speak to the ultimate question of sovereignty."
Surely, we can agree that these statements could not have been made without Netanyahu's consent?
Bibi's stance makes perfect sense ie. accept a Palestinian state with conditions that any state would require (ie. that it accept Israel's existence, not fire rockets into border cities, not turn around and promise war unless a new set of demands are fulfilled etc.).
It's a fact that none of the Palestinian factions will assent to these very basic conditions. So practically speaking it is not happening in the near term.
Well, clearly Mahmoud Abbas didn't interpret Obama's language the way you do. After Obama's speech Abbas said "This statement is totally rejected" and that "we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state".
At the time of Obama's speech it was pretty clear what was going on. There was considerable talk that with Hillary Clinton dropping out of the race that much of her pro-Israel support would go to McCain rather than Obama. Obama and his advisers knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote that speech, which in retrospect was clearly misleading.
The accusation that Obama wants to have it both ways is probably fair, but who doesn't?
The enormous difficulty of all this is that the actual words one uses do have real consequences. Other countries and organizations read the tea leaves and act accordingly, changing the game. Obama's words thus far as president have consistently fallen into the category of putting pressure on Israel to give ground on this issue, combined with exhortations to Arab countries to look at their societies critically, with few specifics.
Can you give an example of this in any other country, where the capital city of one nation is administered by more than one national government? I guess Berlin before the walls came down. This wasn't ideal, not a long-term solution at all. Other than that?
I'm curious how you construct the sentence, "The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction, " such that 'illegal' modifies 'East Jerusalem.'
You have to make the jump that because they are being viewed the same ("with regard to its demand for a freeze") that 'illegal' somehow magically extends to East Jerusalem. It's possible that the Obama administration takes the position that EJ is 'illegal' in some way, and I would have asked that follow up question. It would seem entirely possible to say that you view a lawful situation and an unlawful situation as the same for a particular request, without making any logically necessary implication that the lawful act is in fact unlawful.
But I guess there's not much fun in interpreting someone's statements in good faith, it's much easy to just say "I don't like the sound of that," and keep shooting.
I was being charitable just by being willing to concede that thinking Israel "should not" build in (so-called) "East Jerusalem" is compatible with the original claim. It's only barely such. It's hard to actually see how it's compatible to think that Israelis should not be able to build on their own land in their own "undivided" capital.
Sure, sure – we're all self-hating Jews, we all pray for Israel to be "wiped off the map," we all fall asleep wrapped in HAMAS flags and we all think in goosestep lockstep. Oh, Pseuss – all our wicked secrets exposed by you in one, irrelevant ad hominem attack!
Am I not "progressive" enough to fit your definition? Not "anti-Zionist" enough? Oh, right, just not "Jew" enough ...
Regardless, my concern with pure "territory" covers only the post-1967 occupied lands. Yes, I have political issues – including "anti-Zionist" political issues – that involve administration of the State of Israel proper (i.e., pre-1967 lands), but they are indeed quite differentiated from the issues concerning the West Bank and Gaza. Still, as JK says, "keep shooting!"
There's no threat, no fear, no repercussion. Obama could have quoted Ahmadinejad quoting Khomeni and it still wouldn't matter. US policy will not change. There will be no withdrawal of US support. There will be no economic sanctions. There will be no US vote to condemn at the UN. To the extent Obama's comments express any departure from Israeli policy, he's just blowing smoke up someone's tuchus – and it ain't yours.
David M. N.: "Eyesay, since when is one not sovereign over one's own capital? (I mean, absent losing a war and being occupied, a la Baghdad for several years, or the Axis powers after WW2?) What exactly would it mean for Jerusalem to be the undivided capital of Israel if Israelis couldn't even live there?"
Yes, after WWII, Berlin was administered initially by four powers, and eventually the British, French, and U.S. zones merged into West Berlin. Prior to the Berlin wall, there was free travel between the zones.
Part of the problem is that we think of "sovereignty" as one unified concept, when it can, at least in principle, be disaggregated. Aspects of sovereignty include:
- The power to impose property, sales, income, excise, and other taxes
- the power to establish law
- the power to enforce law
- the power to adjudicate law
- the responsibility to provide government services such as water, sewer, fire protection, schools, etc.
I would imagine that in all of West Jerusalem, i.e. inside pre-1967 borders of Israel, Israel would retain all, or nearly all, sovereignty powers. An exception might be, for example, that a policeman of Palestine might be permitted to chase down a traffic violator in hot pursuit into pre-1967 Israel and arrest the driver there.
In the rest of Jerusalem, I could imagine various ways of parceling out the various components of sovereignty.
Once the Israelis and Palestinians, both popularly and among leadership, are committed to living side-by-side in peace and to hammering out a workable agreement, it should not be too awfully hard for them to come up with something. It's not for me to predetermine for them what that is. But the main thing is that it should feel like a unified city, like Vatican City in Rome.
That said, I do not think that a freeze on outlying settlements will result in a peace deal. But neither will expansion. I do think that the outlying settlements are political rather than security-based, and cost too much in blood, treasure, security and PR damage. That is certainly the internal debate in Israel. As a pragmatic matter, despite our "official policy" the failure of the U.S. to have done anything on the singular “anti-Israel” position it has long held, is a propaganda tool against us. Is it “fair” to pressure Israel while not pressuring the Palestinians on terrorism first? Certainly not, but I am not sure that should control U.S. policy.
To me, this is less about Israel than about Obama’s “unclenched fist” strategy. A freeze on outlying settlements is from the U.S. standpoint, a symbolic gesture that costs neither it nor Israel anything in terms of security. There are only a limited number of such gestures in our repertoire and stands as one the few safe ways an “unclenched fist” can be backed up by demonstration. Viewed from that standpoint, it is a tactical, not strategic break with Israel. The notion that this presages the latter, while supportable, is not demonstrable, and, I believe, incorrect.
As I think the administration to date has shown, confusing Obama with Carter or Bush, will lead to incorrect predictions about actual policy. If either of the latter had thought Guantanamo or military commissions were “immoral” they would have been gone come hell or high water. This is why their admirers like them, while I considered them temperamentally unfit for their position. Even when he is wrong, Obama is cautious, pragmatic and plays a long game. Sometimes one begins a chess game with a gambit.
As an afterword, during the campaign Professor Bernstein and I disagreed about Obama's ability to obtain the traditional levels of Jewish support for democratic candidates. I argued that he had plenty work to do but that he would be successful, as he was. This does not mean I am correct this time, but I think that analysis of what he intends from static policy points in the news cycle is of little help, when, from my observation, his primary modus operendi is dynamic, strategic and long term.
This is way way off. The "settlers" build little "outposts" consisting mobile homes on hilltops. Every so often the IDF goes and dismantles them, but some "activists" like to pretend that they are some huge obstacle to peace.
Then there is the case of Har Homa, which Bibi started up around 2000. If he hadn't then Bethlehem and Beit Zafafa would have grown into each other - the Palestinian version of "facts on the ground" that hypocritical leftists refuse to think about.
For better of worse, the Zionists want more -- and more: Jerusalem, settlement blocs, overfly rights -- the list is endless. These reflect not serious peace proposals but the conclusion of Zionists like Bernstein that the Jews will maintain the upper hand for the forseeable future and hence can continue to chisel for an advantage without consequences to themselves.
The American administration is to be praised for having, however gingerly, reasserted the basic principle of the two-state solution; the Jews get 78% of Palestine, but they cede control of the other 22%.
I don't think Obama is particularly cautious or pragmatic. His rhetoric is sweeping. He's attempting to remodel 1/3 of the economy, quickly, during a recession. A lot of people are relying on him to do this: it is why they voted for him. And I don't think he's playing some kind of seven-dimensional long-game chess: it's not possible to play a long game if your words &actions are subject to revision without explanation. In the case of the "undivided" remarks, there are folks who heard his words, understood what they mean, and attached a certain understanding to the candidate that is at odds with what his administration actually will do; this is not a long-term/long-game approach to policy, it's simple salesmanship. It may, however, work better than the "I a toldja what I'm a doing, ain't nobody gunna change muh mind" approach. We'll see.
Two West Bank towns would have grown together -- so what? The West Bank is Palestinian. They build their houses to live in them and not, like the settlers, in order to drive wedges of human shields into the landscape.
Both inside Israel, in the West Bank, and in Gaza (where Israel is blocking deliveries of building materials like concrete needed to repair or rebuild the thousands of homes and buildings destroyed by Israel in their recent bombing campaign) -- the Zionist movement has used every means, both legal and thuggish, even murderous -- to prevent Palestinians from building on their land. To compare Palestinian natives building Jewish thugs seizing outposts and terrorizing their neighbors is a perverted, racist logic indeed.
Sure, sure. We'll just add one wrinkle to these "sensible" conditions: they apply to Israel as well. In any peace agreement:
1. Israel will be completely demilitarized. This will be enforced by remote monitoring of all of Israel's ports and crossings.
2. Prior to negotiations, Israel will acknowledge Palestine's right to exist as a Palestinian state. They will acknowledge the Palestinians as native inhabitants facing a colonial occupation.
3. Palestinians will have overfly rights over Israeli airspace.
4. Jerusalem will be undivided capital of Palestine.
If these are reasonable conditions on the sovereignty of a state, Israel should be willing to accept them, especially as they, not the Palestinians, have been the aggressors, indeed having in many cases crossed oceans in order to engage in a violent conflict with the native inhabitants over a land they had never seen.
In the midst of the controversy over what is and what isn't anti-Semitism, thanks for the nice example of an "is." It's a useful reference point. My favorite part was "chisel for an advantage." That's poetry.
Yes, those "little outposts" are really just an annoyance. After all, it's not like the scum who infest them REGULARLY TERRORIZE THEIR NEIGHBORS in retaliation for IDF actions
"Settlers attack Palestinians following outpost evacuation"
". . . He said 10 settlers riding horses and carrying torches set fire to between 1,500 and 2,000 olive trees. Olives are an important cash crop for Palestinians, who have complained of frequent attacks on their groves by settlers.
The violence is part of a "price tag" policy in which settlers retaliate to the outpost removals by harassing local Palestinians."
Yep, "riding horses and carrying torches." No word on whether they brought their white sheets.
An obstacle to peace? Yeah, I'd say so.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101547.html
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3749336,00.html
Oooh, an ad hominem accusation of racism. Never heard that one before. [/sarcasm]
Bring some facts or get lost.
In the first place, well over 50% of the British Mandate of Palestine is now part of Jordan, so going back to pre-1967 boundaries, Israel is not getting 78%, it's getting much less than 50%. In the second place, around the time of 1948, Jews were ethnically cleansed from Iraq and Iran and other Arab countries, and Jews were ethnically cleansed by Palestinians from Hebron in the 1920s. Israel has been far more tolerant of its non-Jewish minorities than its neighbors have been of their Jewish minorities, so don't be blaming the ethnic cleansing on the Jews. Third, exact borders are subject to negotiation; there is nothing sacred about pre-1967 borders.
Fairness is not an obtainable goal.
They need to agree a little more strongly than they have already. It would help to rewrite the Hamas charter to declare once and for all that the destruction of Israel is off the table. And it was the Palestinian negotiators, not the Israeli negotiators, who kicked over the table in 2000.
OK, here's a fact. Calling you an anti-Semite would be ad hominem. I called your comment anti-Semitic. That's not. Learn the difference.
Right, because nothing short of a pogrom is anti-Semitic. Crude stereotypes about Jews "chisel[ing] for an advantage" don't qualify at all.
Sorry, Leo, you're wrong again. Accusing a person of anti-Semitism is an ad homenium attack, especially when it is used, as you use it, to avoid a serious discussion of the issue.
"Crude stereotypes about Jews "chisel[ing] for an advantage" don't qualify at all."
If that's your concern, I'm surprised you're talking to me, and not to the reporters spreading via Bernie Madoff a crude Jewish sterotype of a slick Jewish con man swindling people out of billions. You get right on that, will you?
Indeed, your own posts pose a similar problem, contributing as they do to the crude Jewish stereotype of mindlessly spouting baseless accusations of racism at any criticism of Israel.
It is my fault if people behave in ways which coincidentally align with sterotypes about their groups. Barbarism and fanaticism are stereotypes applied by Westerners to Muslims and to Arabs. Will you therefore attack anyone who describes members of those groups as barbarous or fanatical? No. If (say) a Muslim behaves in a barbaric way, he or she will be described as barbarous, whether or not this is in congruence with a preexisting stereotype. And Jews who chisel for an advantage will not be excused from an accurate description of their behavior by hiding behind victims of the type of racism they are struggling to promote.
No. It is a myth that Transjordan was ever a part of the Palestinian Mandate. Both were administered by Britain -- Transjordan was nevertheless entirely seperate legally and no more a part of Palestine than Greece.
Wrong again, in so many ways. Iraq never expelled Jews. Egypt, reprehensibly, did, but it is an exception among the Arab countries of which, incidently, Iran is not among. Iran (a Persian nation) did not expel Jews.
Get your facts straight.
Sacred, no, legal, yes: the annexation of any part of the West Bank is illegal under the Geneva conventions, as is settling civilians on any part of it.
But hey, I have no problem discarding the 1967 borders. Let's instead use the borders agreed to by the international community in the partition resolution. Or if you don't like those, the borders proposed by the Peel commission in 1937 are a good alternative. Or give up on dividing the country, and simply give all Palestinians equal rights with Jews -- including the vote.
There are many alternatives to the 1967 borders, which heavily favor the Zionist movement. If Zionists persist in refusing to take "yes" for an answer and continuing to chisel away for more land and resources, they are going to end up with a less favorable alternative.
No Arab ethnic cleansing of Jews?
According to JIMENA, Jews of Libya, "Post WW2 persecution caused virtually all the community to emigrate, its property confiscated."
According to Wikipedia, History of the Jews in Algeria, "The Algerian Nationality Code of newly independent Algeria, promulgated in 1963, granted citizenship only to Muslims, requiring that only those individuals whose fathers and paternal grandfathers had Muslim personal status could become citizens of the new state. All Jewish and Christian residents were driven into exile, no matter that the Jewish community could trace its presence to Roman times."
According to BBC (not noted for any pro-Israel bias), Israelis from Iraq remember Babylon,"But, while anti-Jewish sentiment flared up after the creation of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49, discrimination and attacks on Jews were part of life in Iraq. In the most notorious incident, mobs rampaged through the Jewish district of Baghdad killing an estimated 170 Jews in 1941, in what became known as the Farhoud massacre. By 1952, 120,000 Jews, about three quarters of the community, had fled Iraq for Israel."
I could go on and on with this one. Get your facts straight.
I don't accept the theory that the Geneva Convention prohibits annexation of territories resulting from a victory in a war of national survival, or allowing civilian citizens of the winning country to settle on any part of it. But, if the Geneva convention did go this way, are you raising similar objections to the Chinese occupation and settlement of Tibet, or the American occupation and settlement of "Indian" lands, for that matter?
It's not clear to many of us here on the Volokh Conspiracy that the Zionists [sic] are refusing to take "Yes" more than the Palestinians. There is no Zionist National Charter that declares that everything from the Jordan to the Mediterranean shall be a Jewish state, free of Palestinians.
Actually, there is: read the Likud charter.
Your various straw man arguments require no detailed rebuttal; the fact that you are compelled to falsify my statements in order to cobble together an argument speaks for itself.
(For example, you attribute to me the view that there was "No Arab ethnic cleansing of Jews" when I explictly stated Egypt had expelled its Jewish residents.)
On one point I should correct myself: the British Mandate did briefly include both Transjordan and Palestine, however, they were two territories under a single Mandate, not one, as your source explictly recognises: "Britain administered the part west of the Jordan, 23% of the entire territory, as "Palestine", and the part east of the Jordan, 77% of the entire territory, as "Transjordan." Technically they remained one mandate but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates."
Similarly beneath notice are your repeated fictional assertions reguarding the history of Arab Jews. I don't doubt you could "go on and on" but it's quality, not quantity, that counts.
Nor in your interpretation of the Geneva Conventions of any interest: you're wrong, and interested parties can read the conventions for themselves.
I did like your laughable assertion that the Jewish assault on its Arab neighbors in 1967 via a Pearl-Harbor-style aerial ambush constituted a "war of national survival." Israel wasn't attacked, and by the admission of its own generals, instigated most of the border skirmishes used as excuses for its land grab. All Israel's generals expected to win the war easily, as they did. Prewar discussions among the Israeli government reflect fears that "the window is closing" to attack their neighbors, as Egypt had already agreed to binding arbitration of all outstanding disputes.
A "war of national survival." Tell me another one.
Except I didn't accuse "a person." I thanked you for giving us a "nice example" of anti-Semitism, adding that "[i]t's a useful reference point." "It" obviously refers to your comment, not to you. Are you an "it"?
I didn't avoid anything. This was my first comment to you, so it was exactly what I was discussing.
Really? Which posts are those? You wouldn't be assuming the conclusion here to prove your general point, which in turn proves what I'm doing here, would you? Because that would be circular. So you must have other evidence. I know you'd never just accuse me indiscriminately of contributing to a crude Jewish stereotype. Because that would be anti-Semitic, if I may say so without contributing to a crude Jewish stereotype.
Other than being disgusted, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. So let's take another look at your comment that started all this.
You describe a conflict between two peoples: Palestinians, who you never call Arabs or Muslims (or Christians), and Zionists/Jews, who you never call Israelis. Palestinians are apparently an ethnically neutral nationality, while Jews have no national identity at all, just lots of "international influence." Oy. But hey, why should they care? According to you, Bernstein knows "the Jews will maintain the upper hand for the forseeable future and hence can continue to chisel for an advantage without consequences to themselves."
Israel, shmisrael. In Skeptic911's world there's no such thing as an Israeli, just an influential, international Jew, chiseling for advantage without consequence. Yikes! Why didn't anyone warn us? But hey, no anti-Semitism there, right?
I'll give you one thing. You've almost won me over on your first point. I still can't say whether you're actually an anti-Semite, but it doesn't matter. If you're not, you might as well be.
Apparently it also disguised its navy as Egyptian in order to blockade itself.
You are hilarious. You won't own up to your own ad hominum, and to defend it you repeat it: since I accurately describe your logical fallacies, I must be an anti-Semite.
Keep on repeating it, over and over; your pathetic exploitation of Jewish victims of racism to silence criticism of Israel is too common and shabby to fool anyone.
Love it when it's this easy ;)
Of course you forget that a quarter of Israeli citizens are not Zionists, and ignore the fact that many Zionists are not Israelis.
Palestinians are Palestinians. It would be awkward to invoke the Christian-Muslim-secular, Arab-beudouin-Druze(some-of- which-are-Zionists)-and-assorted-other-ethnic groups.
The Palestinians are a polyglot nation, united by langauge, history, and homeland.
I refer to "Jews" only when others invoke "Jews" -- show me where I've attributed any characteristics to Jews as a group. I haven't, because, unlikely Zionists, I don't subscribe to racist theories about my fellow human beings.
Are you referring to the Egyptians' restriction of the passage of military supplies via a domestic Egyptian waterway? A dispute over a port that handled less than 5% of Israel's trade, a dispute which Egyptian authorities had already agreed to submit to binding arbitration?
Try again. Or don't; your pathetic attempts to rewrite history demonstrate eloquently your complete inability to cope with the facts.
Bless you, you just keep playing the same song, don't you? Judaism is a religion. It has been a religion for the past 1,600 years.
Jews, like Christians, Muslims, Buddists, and Hindus, have national identities according to the nations to which they belong. To suggest that all Jews are Israeli nationalists accuses all American Jews, for example, of having no loyalty to the American nation.
Please do not repeat such racist allegations about Jews; they are offensive.
I explained twice why my comment wasn't ad hominem. Do you really think ipse dixits are a convincing substitute for responding to what I said?
Glad you're so easily amused.
I explained why you're wrong. You ignore the explanation and I'm the one who won't own up?
No, your comment is anti-Semitic because it contains blood libel and other bigoted canards. And simply repeating that I've committed logical fallacies doesn't cut it. Try addressing my explanation of why you're wrong.
I refuted the accusation you keep repeating, as if no one will notice you don't have a response to the refutation.
This is the same place you lost me in your last comment. What the hell are you talking about? Just who is it you imagine I've exploited?
I agree. Talking to yourself isn't much of a challenge. For a higher degree of difficulty, deal with the arguments of the person you're addressing.
A little reality check for my curiosity: Do you think there's anything ad hominem in your comments?
Your self-justifications failed utterly to meet the test of common sense. You accused me of making an anti-Semitic comment, an accusation which was both false and ad homenium in that in implied I was guilty of making a racist comment.
"For a higher degree of difficulty, deal with the arguments of the person you're addressing."
Your "arguments," such as they are, have been dealt with. I'm not surprised you missed it; shredding your bull didn't take long.
If you would like a better discussion, come with a better -- or at least fresher -- argument.
"Israel's generals" did not "admit" "instigating most of the border skirmishes" -- what is this, the silly line about tractors in the Golan again?
Did Israel's generals also order the peacekeepers to leave the Sinai, by the way?
When you use scurrilous accusations of racism like yours to deflect criticism of those you admire, you are exploiting the victims of real racism to cover your lack of real arguments. To do it in defense of a racist regime, as you do, is hypocritical as well as manipulative.
The silly admission that they instigated virtually all the clashes on the Golan? An admission which is affirmed by any historian of the period you care to name? Could be.
The removal of peacekeepers from Egyptian territory, whence they were placed after the first invasion of Egypt by Israel in 1956, was Egypt's right. Their withdrawal was peaceful. Israel, if they had wanted the peacekeepers' protection, certainly could have invited them over to the Israeli side of the border. Israel's own military reported that the Egyptian forces which replaced the peacekeepers were in a clear defensive posture and not in sufficient numbers to attack.
Israel started the war, because they wanted the land. The same reason they started the war in 1956. It's not hard to understand if you can get past the blind partisanship which transforms a carefully crafted surprise attack on a clearly inferior foe in defensive positions into a "war for survival."
I know how at least 80 percent of the clashes there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let's talk about 80 percent. It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough someplace where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.
A disgruntled journalist? An anti-Zionist critic? Nope, Moshe Dayan, Israel's minister of defense prior to and during the Six-Day War.
It should be noted that this admission is by no means an isolated piece of evidence; repeated Israeli provocations including the expulsion of civilians from demilitarized zones and insertion of military units into same have been documented by numerous historians based entirely on Israeli sources.
They were spoiling for a fight, which they knew they would win easily.
1) one silly semantic claim, that "lobby" is "vaguely conspiratorial language";
2) one insulting epithet, unsupported by reason or evidence;
3) one question-begging assertion of the point at issue ("Obama absolutely intended it to have that connotation"), again unsupported by reason or evidence;
4) one parting remark ("Now that he is in power he is free to throw them under the bus") that merely exposes the triviality of his and Bernstein's complaint about "candidate Obama": if not supporting sole Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem is "throwing [his AIPAC audience] under the bus", he didn't wait until he was in power to do it, he did it the very next day, when he and his spokesmen affirmed that the status of Israel was to be negotiated between the parties.
Likewise, if "candidate Obama", as Bernstein (wrongly) implies, represented himself as supporting sole Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, then he did so for one day of his candidacy, give or take some hours, from June 4 to June 5; from June 5 until election day, he was on record as disavowing any such position.
1. The internationally recognized capital of Israel is Tel Aviv. That is where it was prior to the Six-Day War, and moving the capital was part of a transparent attempt to lay claim to occupied land. This politically motivated shift has no bearing on Jerusalem's future.
2. Israel greatly expanding Jerusalem's city limits prior to annexing "Jerusalem." This was done in part to flinch more land but primarily to ring the capital with Jewish settlements and isolate the Palestinian east of the city.
3. Whatever historical associations Zionists claim with this area of Jerusalem or that settlement, they are dwarfed by the overwhelming legal and moral as well as historical rights the Palestinians have west of the Green Line, where they constituted a two-thirds majority prior to the expulsions and terrorism of 1947-1949, in which Zionist forces obliterated more than 300 Palestinian villages.
If we were to allocate land on the basis of historical associations, the Palestinians would have to be given title to the great majority of the land inside the Green Line.
The point of the two-state solution is to bypass those historical claims and divide the land that Palestinians and the Jewish colonists both claim (unequally and greatly in favor of the Jewish ethnic cleansers, it should be noted.) Jewish claims east of the Green Line must be waived if Palestinian claims west of the line are also to be waived. Those that would remove 78% of Palestine from the discussion and then divide the remaining 22% of Palestine according to Jewish "historical associations" would wish to have their cake and eat it too, if they were sincere.
Sadly, while in some Zionists this view reflects simple greed and ignorance of the Palestinians' rights, those in the government and the elites promote it out of a cynical desire to perpetuate the conflict indefinitely.
Yes, it does say something about sovereignty: that Israel should have sovereign rights in Jerusalem. But it does not say that Israel should have sole sovereignty. The position of the Clinton administration, amongst others, was that Jerusalem should be undivided and should "encompass the internationally recognized capitals of two states, Israel and Palestine".
That statement was already quoted in the comment (rmd 7.20.2009 2:49am) to which Nieporent was replying; his argument was refuted in advance.
Of the various US government statements I quoted, only one said addressed Jerusalem's capital city status — the last one, Clinton's — and it, as just related, said that it should be Israel's capital (and Palestine's too).
I neither forget nor ignore it. It's you who chose to describe one group in national terms, the other, religious.
I see, but it's not awkward to attribute everything reprehensible to "the Jews." It was your choice to use those terms asymmetrically, and now you act shocked when it's pointed out to you.
... and according to the ruling party of their elected government, by religion. You think Israel isn't polyglot? How many countries do Israelis come from? Which population do you think looks more diverse?
Bullshit. The comment I mentioned has four gratuitously disparaging references to Jews, where "Israelis" would have been just as accurate, sans bigotry. I notice you cleaned up your act after I complained. Why do that if there was nothing wrong in the first place?
It's hard to believe you're serious, but I'll play along. As I just said, you used some variant of "Jew" four times in that comment, associating it with everything from ethnic cleansing to overweening international influence to a tendency to "chisel." Were any of those singular?
If you really believe you said nothing anti-Semitic, you don't know the meaning of anti-Semitism.
Of course I agree that in speaking to AIPAC, Obama highlighted the AIPAC-friendly aspects of his position, in AIPAC-friendly language.
I expect we can both agree too that Obama miscalculated somehow with the AIPAC speech; he surely wasn't aiming to invite accusations of backtracking.
The Obama camp claim he never meant his statement to be taken as supporting sole Israeli sovereignty; evidence in favour is that when it was so taken, they promptly denied it.
The alternative is that he did mean to convey that impression; but as soon as he succeeded, he backtracked. Why would he do that? The only explanation I've seen is "criticism from Palestinians". But why would presidential candidate Obama fear the wrath of Mahmoud Abbas?
Another straw man. Please cite where I attributed everything reprehensible to "the Jews."
I'm sure there is a better debater somewhere inside of you, if you can get past spouting these pathetic allegations of racism at the expense of reasoned argument.
You're making my point. The proper word for the people you referred to in the ugliest terms as "Jews" is "Israelis." Yet for some reason you preferred "Jews."
I'm waiting for your answer as to whether there's anything ad hominem in your comments.
"As I just said, you used some variant of "Jew" four times in that comment, associating it with everything from ethnic cleansing to overweening international influence to a tendency to "chisel."
Cite anything I said about a "tendency to chisel." I said nothing about any "tendency" of the Jews or any other group. You do realize other people can see the comments I made, right?
It is a fact that certain Jews committed ethnic cleansing. One can call the people who did it "Zionists," if you prefer, but in my experience, this does nothing to slow the allegations of racism, as people will accuse those using the term of using "Zionist" as a synonym for "Jew."
I sorry if it offends you that Jews have committed ethnic cleansing, or that they sometimes do unattractive things such as chiseling for an advantage. But to sustain a charge of racism, what you need to show is that I attribute certain behavior of characteristics to people as a function of their religious identity. Which is why you dishonestly insert words like "tendency" or refer to fictional "disparaging remarks about Jews."
Why don't you admit you lied and try and come up with some valid argument against what I'm saying? Your disgraceful ad hominem attacks discredit those your flimsy accusations are meant to deflect attention from.
So having failed in the efforts to attack my positions, your solution is to ask me to attack myself? I shouldn't complain; it makes more sense then endlessly repeating and elaborating on patently false allegations of racism.
Again, you ignore the fact that over a quarter of the citizens of Israel are not, in fact, Zionists. Your racist disregard of the Palestinian citizens of Israel is no different than identifying the United States as a WASP nation and demanding that all actions by white Protestants be referred to as actions of "Americans."
Your attempt to classify Jewish colonists and Jewish colonists alone as "Israelis" is bigotry, plain and simple. The conflict over Palestine is not between "Israelis" and "Palestinians." It's between Israel's Palestinian majority and the Jewish majority which rule over them by means of a racist apartheid state.
But thanks for telling us what you really think about the 1.5 million Israelis who aren't Jews.
The Israel is supposedly Jewish; but the crimes done to establish and maintain the "Jewish state" must never by associated with Jews.
Some Jews support that evil; some ignore it, being reasonably concerned with their own lives and communities in their own homelands. Some actively fight against it; some have died, been crushed by bulldozers or shot by the IDF or beaten to death by settlers, defying this evil regime.
(Apologies to DB. I hope you'll agree the damage to the thread is already done, so a little more diversion won't matter.)
Right back at you, big guy. G'night.
I'm not, at all. I'm a paramedic and an admirer of Hume. The handle was a total brain glich on my part, and I wish I knew how to change it.
The whole discourse about the conflict is distorted that way; suicide bombing are rightly assailed as barbaric, but indiscriminate bombings get labels like "unhelpful." Maybe I'm fanning the flames, and I shouldn't, but I feel as though the actions I'm describing deserve the contempt with which I address them.
It's not worth noting, because it's untrue. Moskowitz, or C and M Properties, did buy the Shepherd Hotel in 1985, not from its Arab owners but from government of Israel; that government having taken it over from the government of Jordan following the 1967 war, according to one account, or having confiscated it as "absentee property" from the heirs of Amin al Husseini, according to another.
A couple other notes on this "Jews bought the land from its Arab owners" meme. One, it has no bearing on the legality of settling civilians in occupied territory, including East Jerusalem. That's illegal under the Geneva Conventions regardless of who owns the land or how they acquired title to it.
Second, the conditions on land use and purchase by Palestinians on the one hand and Jews on the other are set up to always privilege the latter at the expense of the rights of the former. Two examples from today's Ha'aretz, examples which can be multiplied endlessly:
"Most Arabs can't buy most homes in West Jerusalem"
"Israel weighs confiscation of more Palestinian land"
Also, shame on you, Mr. Bernstein, attributing a shady land deal to "Jews." Don't you realize you're advancing a crude stereotype of Jews as avaricious swindlers? You must instead say "sold by the Arab owners to Israelis." Otherwise, you are (apparently) an anit-Semite. Get it? No? Leo can explain it to you.
You were doing so well there for a second. Anyway, if your 4:04 comment had been your first, we could have saved a lot of bandwidth.
Just one last thing. I reject the notion that every racist word that's uttered qualifies the person who said it as a racist. So if I say a comment is racist, that is not the same thing as saying the person who said it is a racist.
Nevertheless, such is the common understanding. Racism has an extraordinarily negative connotation -- few people would make a distinct between a person who makes racist comments and a racist.
I would remind you that I started by addressing the subject of the post, and you started by calling my comments anti-Semitic. Given that, I'm not quite prepared to take all the blame for the mutual hostility which ensued. I would be happy to take some of the responsibility, however, and even more happy to substitute a measured exchange of views for a cycle of accusation and counter-accusation.
What millions of dead Jews? According to official Israeli sources there lived 1.5 million Palestinians in Israel before the Fatah, and since Israel was an Apartheit settler-state, there could only have been about 150,000 Jews living there ruling over an oppressed majority (see the demographics of other Apartheit settler-states like French Algeria, South Africa and Rhodesia).
That about equals the number of Israeli ''refugees'' that arrived in the US and Europe so the Fatah demonstrably didn't kill very many at all. At most a few hundred.
end swiftian text
Ok, seriously now: I would expect the usual suspects to reason like that if Israel falls.
Of course, the ruling races always warns us that any rights extended to those of inferior blood will result in slaughter, but do we listen? No. The French are cruelly driven out of Algeria; the sun sets on the British Empire (after which, we all remember, millions of Englishman were slaughtered by those they had colonized.)
Ah, when will people learn democracy doesn't work.
Note that for anti-semites -- and I have no compunctions about calling the poster an anti-semite (see, e.g., his Bernie Madoff comments above in a thread about Israel!) -- when Syria responds to a plowing tractor with a military attack, it's Israel's fault; when Israel responds to a naval blockade with military force, it's Israel's fault. It doesn't really matter who fires first; it's always Israel's fault.
That's because foreign countries do not get a say in what the capital of a country is. There could be a poll of all 191 non-Israel members of the U.N., and they could unanimously declare Ashkelon the capital of Israel if they chose; wouldn't make a bit of difference. (And, of course, the U.S. considers Jerusalem the capital.) The capital of a country, as opposed to a border, is a purely internal matter.
(Now, most countries do not recognize Israel's so-called "annexation" of so-called "East Jerusalem," and therefore do not recognize that as part of the Israeli capital, but that's a different issue than whether Jerusalem or Tel Aviv is the capital.)In addition, the timeline is false; Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since 1950, and of the small number of countries that had diplomatic relations with Israel, a significant percentage had their embassies there. It wasn't until Israel supposedly annexed East Jerusalem that all those countries moved their embassies.
In short, your description is dishonest as usual.
And as to the second point, it's talking about the use of eminent domain for a sewage treatment plant -- condemnation, not confiscation.
1) an Israeli government account:
2) a Palestinian account:
3) a US government account:
Israel's violation of the 1949 armistice it signed, and violation of Syria's borders, warranted and indeed sought a defensive reaction by Syria. Hypocrite that you are, you justify Israel aggression of the basis of Egypt's supposed "intentions" (which as the Israelis knew, were defensive) yet you ignore the provocative intentions of Israel as attested by its own defense minister.
"While there were expulsions during the war for independence more than 60 years ago, that was a wartime situation and not a permanent policy of Israel."
"Wartime" is always when ethnic cleansing is undertaken. It's a feeble excuse for mass murder and mass expulsions. And it is a permanent policy; Israel has not only committed acts of expulsion since then, they have also refused to allow the expelled to return home. That is a continuation of the crime. The "wartime" defense is thus like someone accused of stealing a wallet who claims they just picked it up off the ground, then refuses to return the wallet to its owner. The determination to benefit from the crime tells you everything you need to know about the criminal.
"Nobody calls Israeli Arabs the primary obstacle to peace, the way any Jew living in possible Palestinian territory is described. Under the "two state solution," there would be millions of Arabs in Israel, and no Jews in the Palestinian territory."
Myth. The PA has declared that any settlers who wish to remain may do so. It is the Israeli government that refuses to imagine Jews living in a Palestinian-dominated state.
"There are no summary executions of Israelis for "treason" for selling property to Arabs, the way there are of Palestinians for selling property to Jews."
That's because the Jewish population controls the law in all of Palestine, and they simply make it illegal to sell to a non-Jew, whilst preventing the Palestinians from banning land sales to foreigners.
While we're on the subject, you ignored the salient facts of the articles published in Ha'aretz. These included: Netanyahu lied when he claimed Palestinians in East Jerusalem could buy land in West Jerusalem. The non-Jews born in Israel's "eternal, undivided" capital are denied citizenship on the basis of their religion, and this is used to further discrimination in land purchases and in many other spheres.
You also were forced to lie about land confiscation, claiming it isn't going on, when in fact the article clearly states that it is, also contrary to a pledge by Netanyahu. In fact, this is only one of many, many examples of land confiscation. And no wonder: when Jewish forces ethnically cleansed Palestine, the Jewish community owned less than 7% of land. They've been busily filching the other 93% ever since.
Palestinians: Settlers cut down 40 olive trees in fresh West Bank rampage
Extremist settlers often vandalize Palestinian property to protest Israel's removal of small, illegal outposts in the West Bank - a tactic they call "the price tag."
For example, the expulsion of the Palestinians from Ashkelton:
"On 17 August 1950, the town's inhabitants were served with an expulsion order and the first group of them were taken on trucks to the Gaza Strip[16] where they joined their fellows in the refugee camps there."
Nor did the massacres stop when the war ended:
"The Kafr Qasim massacre took place in the Israeli Arab village of Kafr Qasim situated on the Green Line, at that time, the de facto border between Israel and Jordan on October 29, 1956. It was carried out by the Israel Border Police (Magav) and resulted in 48 Arab civilians dead, including 6 women and 23 children aged 8-17. Arab sources usually give the death toll as 49, as they include the unborn child of one of the women."
Israel attempted to repeat its "success" of 1948 when it seized the West bank and Gaza:
"[In the days following Israel's conquest of the West Bank] over one hundred thousand new Palestinian refugees from within Israel as well as the West Bank crossed into East Bank Jordan, many forcibly evicted from their homes; villages were bulldozed to ensure that they would not return."
Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Charles Smith.
Examples continue up to the present day, but again, what is most damning is the refusal by all Israeli governments to honor the refugees legal and moral right to return home. If these were spontaneous atrocities committed without an organized plan of ethnic cleansing (and the record says otherwise, but still) then Israel should be ready to allow civilians to return to their homeland. That they prevent this by force makes them accomplices to ethnic cleansing and just as guilty as those who murdered and expelled with their own hands.
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